The Spanner Judgement came into force as result of Britain's system of law-making. That is law can be made by either parliament or the judiciary and each are of equal standing in relation to the other. Laws made in parliament can be changed or rescinded by the courts; and laws made by judges can be changed or struck down by parliament.

The Spanner case is doubly interesting in that it was a case constructed by a supposedly impartial police force with a view to changing the existing law without reference to parliament (that is the democratically elected representatives of the people) to allow specific kinds of new prosecutions. And it was successful.

The Police Force in question was The Obscene Publications Squad, an Independant wing of the police answerable only to the Home Secretary. At the time, this was headed by Inspector Michael Hames, a man who was (and still is) connected with a number of right-wing Christian pro-family anti-sex organisations such as Family and Youth Concern and The National Viewers and Listeners Association.

Whilst there has not been a thorough investigation of the background and affiliations of the various judges in this case, the affiliations of the police were clear. They were explicitly opposed to further liberalisation of the law towards sexual minorities and in particular were horrified by the emergence of consensual sadomasochism as a legitimate sexual identity.

The Spanner Case was not the first opportunity that the police had available to them to bring the appropriate charges that could lead to the changes in law that they sought, but it was one they deemed most likely to be successful in gaining sympathy for the police rather than their victims. The victims of this police conspiracy were a group of disparate ill-organised isolated mainly gay men in their 40's and 50's. And for the first years of the prosecutions, the police were successful in galvanising liberal opinion to their side.

• History of the case
• The Defence Campaign
• The European Court Ruling
  For the purposes of formatting - these three files are stored as txt files and do not contain html links. Use your BACKSPACE key to return here
  1. Background Law
     The events considered by the European court prior to the hearing. This includes extracts from the original trial, the appeal and the Law Lords appeal.
  2. The Hearing
     called Final Submissions by the court. This is the case as heard at the European Court Appeal hearing and includes their justifications for their decision
  3. The Minority Report
     . Judge Pettiti submitted a minority report accompanying the Judgement. Usually minority reports are dissenting accounts but in this case the learned judge is arguing that the court were too lenient in their arguments.
• Press Release after the Judgement
• The Law as it stands now
• Back to Info Menu

The Pink Paper, the leading gay newspaper, simply ignored the case, and whilst Liberty (formerly the National Council for Civil Liberties) was theoretically committed to supporting the Spanner men through the sterling work of Feminist Against Censorship, in practice Liberty washed its hands of the men until the defence campaign proved itself capable of some political muscle.

In short , prior to 1992, that is for 5 years, the spanner men were ignored by the whole of the civil liberties and sexuality rights movement. The men experienced incredible outbursts from the various judges: blatant and deeply offensive explicit homophobia; disturbing and dubious psychiatric opinions given unbelievable credibility; and above all - the unchallenged fact that the police and the C.P.S. were, with the courts, attempting to side-step parliament in a case of critical importance to modern understanding of consent in the context of sexual relations.

The crux of this change was to drag laws relating to Offences Against The Person i.e. acts relating to violence, into the field of sexual relations. It was highly improper that these laws should have been applied to consensual sex, and if it was a matter of public interest then the matter should have been considered by parliament as representatives of the public interest and not by a circuit judge.

What follows on these pages is a critical assessment of the background to the case; a brief history of the defence campaign; reports of the various press responses to the case and the campaign; and precis and copies of the judgements handed down at the final appeal, that of the European Court of Human Rights.

It is worth noting that whilst the men ultimately failed at The European Court of Human Rights (and thus much consensual SM remains illegal in the UK), the police were unsuccessful in their attempts to crush the emerging SM identity. On the contrary. The case, and the subsequent defence campaign broadcast the concept of Sadomasochism to a much wider public than would previously have known of the concept.

The SM Pride March, devised and organised the The Spanner Campaign has continued to march every year since 1992; Spanner organisations were set up in the Netherlands and in France. And the nascent international SM movement was connected much intimately as result of the case. And, as importantly, public opinion moved in ways that The O.P.S could never have predicted. As the campaign stepped up the pressure, and in particular as it moved the battleground to the issue of personal liberty and control of the body and away from spurious prurience of voyeuristic puritanism in relation to sex - public opinion moved as well.

Saying that, sadomasochists cannot afford to be complacent. The successful prosecution of the 'Bolton Seven' showed how easily a generally derided piece of exiting law can successfully be applied in rural or small city regions; the prosecution of individuals for retaining sm-related photographs on their hard drives; and the continuing exile of Paula and Genesis Orridge show that whilst the CP{S may be unwilling at present to apply Regina vs. Brown, the precedent remains waiting in the wings for a time when public opinion is more antagonistic towards sexual 'deviance'.

We will only be free to truly explore our sexuality when consent is repositioned in its rightful place as the central arbiter of whether an act is acceptable or not; when our bodies are reclaimed from societal colonisation; and when the notion of sex is liberated from the chains of the reproductive act.
Until then - the struggle for sexual liberation is as pertinent and important as ever.

Kellan Farshea April 1999